What could your brand do with 40 million followers on Twitter? What about 45 million? Celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber send out tweets daily to this amount of followers, while their fans continuously respond with compliments, love, and devotion. So, what can brands learn from these enormous celebrities about how to create an engaging and interesting social media presence?

1—Create A Culture

“Little Monsters” may be a little to eccentric for a company to call their customers, but the united culture is something to strive toward. Lady Gaga has managed to turn her fans into a loving, supporting culture. “Mother Monster,” as she’s called, has given her fans a home, and a sense of belonging. Customers, consumers, and users are all terms that are too disconnected. A brand should show their customers that they have a subculture that their buyers belong to; a family they didn’t even know existed until they started using your product and service. Make your customers be proud to be your “little monster.”

2—Believe In Your Message, But Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously

Sarcasm is now a language within itself. Sarcasm and humor demonstrate personality, which is crucial to a company’s social media presence. You want to offer a human aspect to your accounts so fans and followers know they aren’t just engaging with a robot. Lady Gaga is never afraid to poke fun at herself, her songs, her crazy sense of fashion, and the world around her. Showing personality helps followers relate to your brand’s voice and feel like they know you.

3—Encourage Collaboration

Shockingly, the people that know your customer base the best are your customers! Lady Gaga took notice that her fans were just as artistically inclined as her, and opened up her own social network, LittleMonsters.com. This site has provided a community for her monsters to share their art, while also creating relationships based on acceptance and their love for Gaga. Opening up an opportunity for customers to use their creativity with your brand can help build loyalty towards your brand.

What are other celebrities that companies should learn lessons from? Or what are other lessons that can be learned from the big names in music, movies, and TV? Share with us in the comment section below, and also on our Facebook and Twitter! Also, check out how we create brand cultures on social media at WeiseIdeas.com.

Someone tags you in an unflattering picture on Facebook, you are incensed about something and you tweet a response, you answer a question on Quora without a critical piece of information, wouldn’t be great if there was a social media EDIT button?

Whether it is potentially personally embarrassing or taking an action to protect yourself from an employer, we expect to see a service in the near future for people who want to selectively edit their social history. A Silicon Valley smartie is undoubtedly working on a tool to delete photos from other people accounts, an automatic clean up of your Facebook wall and other actions to sanitize your social history.

For example, what politician would like that picture from the long, lost college days deleted from view and access well before they make the run for political office. Wouldn’t President Obama like to have the famous picture of him smoking (right) when he was in college stricken from the public record.

In a world where perception is reality, former Iowa State head basketball coach Larry Eustachy lost his job over pictures (left) that surfaced about him drinking beer (well, Natural Light) with underage college coeds. Some might argue that the choice of “Natty Lite” is the greater offense. Wouldn’t he like a social media cleanser?

According to the survey by Marist College in New York, half of all users on Facebook and Twitter polled say that verbal or photographic miscues lead them to believe social media does more harm than good. We’re fairly confident that former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner agrees.

Let us know what you think will happen when someone from the ‘Millennial Generation’ runs for President. Without selectively editing social media history what do you think will happen to every tweet, Facebook status or blog post they ever wrote? Share your thoughts here or on Facebook at Weise Communications and follow us on Twitter at @Weise_Ideas.

Foursquare, the location-based service, which allows its users to “check-in” to a wide range of restaurants and businesses, has recently launched a new “explore” application. Foursquare Co-Founder Dennis Crowley said, “The idea is to find things near you, including the unexpected.” This new feature will not only aid users in exploring new venues, but this application also has the capability of marketing businesses.

The new “explore” application works based for user history and search terms. By simply typing in keywords, users are presented with a list of establishments matching their criteria. These results are liable to include new businesses and the “hidden treasures’ users may not be familiar with. Foursquare aims to help its users discover their city and help businesses connect with their customers. Currently, the service has 250,00 businesses signed up which include, national brands, regional franchises, and “mom and pop” establishments. It seems that the new explore feature is going to make this location-based service even more enticing to business owners who like to reach new customers in a unique way.

The two-year-old Foursquare has nearly 7.5 million users worldwide and adds about 35,000 each day. With the new “explore” application, businesses may prove to profit by being able to reach new customers with minimal effort. It will be interesting to see how this application impacts business and if there will be a spike in new client retention in upcoming months as a result.

Share your predictions with us or comment on how location-based services have impacted your business. Share with us on Facebook at Weise Communications and follow @Weise_Ideas on Twitter.

Share The Side Note

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.